It is known that oxygen in aqueous systems will react with sodium sulfite or ammonium bisulfite and thus can be removed as such from such system by treating the system with such sulfite. However, the reaction between oxygen and such sulfite is too slow to be of practical value, and cobalt and various derivatives thereof have been used to speed up the reaction of oxygen and the sulfite. While such catalysts have been effective in an essentially sulfide free aqueous system, they are poisoned or rendered relatively ineffective by soluble sulfides, for example, sodium sulfide and/or hydrogen sulfide. Consequently there is a marked loss of sulfite-oxygen reactivity with wuch catalyst in aqueous systems containing soluble sulfides.
It is also known, for example, from U.S. Pat. No. 4,246,244, issued Jan. 20, 1981, (hereinafter the "244" patent), that certain iron oxides, described therein, will effectively scavenge hydrogen sulfide (hereafter H.sub.2 S) from aqueous systems. However, such iron oxides have no practical value for the scavenging of oxygen from aqueous systems.